Screenhead

Admittedly, when I went into New Moon this morning, I wasn’t expecting anything good.  My experience with Twilight was only a few months old, and it still hurt to think about that slow sludgy mess of sparkly emo boi vampires dragging the genre down with it.

But when I grit my teeth and walked in,  what I got was something somewhat different from what I was expecting.

Just to catch you up on the plot, we’re still with screechy loser Bella Swan and her sparkly emo boi vampire boyfriend Edward.  Only now, we discover that werewolves are also thrown in the mix (it was probably supposed to be a surprise but they tipped their own hand on this point MONTHS ago) and for some reason, both vampire Edward and relative newcomer werewolf Jacob Black are all very much into this pasty cipher of a girl who seems to exist for no other reason than to give the teenage girl fans in the audience an easy point for self-insertion.

Yes, there’s still plenty wrong with this whole thing.  One, none of these people can act worth a fart in a stiff wind–Kristen Stewart still seems dazed by the whole thing and is acting like she’s been suffering a concussion since about ten minutes into the first movie.  Robert Pattinson is a willowy mess–when he takes his shirt off and reveals his new “six pack” it looks like nothing so much as a man in desperate need of a SANDWICH.  Taylor Lautner is the girliest macho man I’ve ever SEEN.  He’s trying DESPERATELY hard to be some kind of bad-ass but then everything he tries is toned down so hard for the consumption of the tweenagers in the audience.  It’s like someone told him, “Be a bad boy, but don’t actually be THREATENING.”  He’s doing his best, I think, but he’s doing it under terribly strained conditions.

Also, why isn’t White Wolf suing holy hell out of Summit, Stephenie Meyer, et al for copyright violation?  I remember the nature-boy werewolves and cosmopolitan corporate vampires back when I was one of the handful of people playing the Rage card game back in 1995!  Now all of a sudden it’s a major motion picture and I don’t think White Wolf’s getting any taste on this.  They DO still have the license at last report even if it’s been sold more times than real estate.

But, like I said originally, this was better than I expected.  If for no other reason than the only way it could be much worse is if Stephenie Meyer personally came to theaters at random and gouged out the eyes of one of the viewers.  There was more action in this, and a developing storyline that still seems rather limited (White Wolf, for Pete’s sake, it’s werewolves versus vampires.  You did ALL this long before them!), but is actually somewhat bearable.

There’s still plenty of slow parts in this, though, and lots of reason to be unhappy, though not nearly as many as the FIRST Twilight installment gave us.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, naturally, agrees with me and hands over a five out of ten to a vampire franchise that may well be starting to look up.  If it continues improving at this rate, Breaking Dawn’s going to be a non-stop bloodbath and even I’ll be impressed.

So today I’ve come in contact with one of the first ever examples of Screamkings online videomaking–the question is, is their short title For Indoor Use Only any good?  Let’s watch!

A young man, working with some Christmas lights, curses the holiday in a moment of frustration.  And when that happens, Christmas decides to take its revenge.

Admittedly, Christmas horror is in fairly short supply.  But this particular example is kind of sparse.  Sparse like the needles on Charlie Brown’s tree.  Oh, sure, what’s here is done fairly well, but it’s not very satisfying.  It’s almost like the Christmas mashed potatoes, or shaped sugar cookies without frosting.  Far from the best, but not necessarily offensive.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shrugs in the general direction of this lackluster title and awards it a five out of ten.  While there isn’t anything really wrong with it, it lacks the necessary force to be called good.  The best you can say about it is that it’s merely mediocre.

We have a resistence to the remake. And it’s understandable, considering most of us only look forward to a remake because of the original. Yet the problem is that deep down we feel that the remake can never live up to the original, and thus nit-pick. But it’s rare to see a remake that isn’t so much an inferior rehash of the original’s premise, rather a remake whose philosophy is a complete reversal of the original, so much so that it’s a downright insult. The new miniseries remake of cult classic The Prisoner has managed to achieve that, by prioritising conformity above individualism.

The original The Prisoner was a TV anomaly. Lead actor in successful spy series Danger Man, Patrick McGoohan was tried of acting in un-enlightening adventures, and set out to make a show that appeared on the surface to be a spy show, but was actually a critique on modern society and its need to repress the rights of the individual and increases the level of governmental surveillance. And while the show is certainly a product of its time (with bright, almost garish colours, and psychadelic moments) in some ways, it was also incredibly important in the evolution of TV. For it was a show that was unafriad to make political commentary without being heavy-handed about it. Its final episodes were also left open for interpretation, another brave move by McGoohan that had members of the public in uproar at the time. One could argue that if it wasn’t for The Prisoner, we wouldn’t have Lost, Twin Peaks, or even the open ending of The Sopranos.

In this era of remakes, it was only a matter of time until they got around to The Prisoner. McGoohan wasn’t interested in being involved, having said everything he wanted to. For a while Christopher Nolan was interested in a feature film version, but that faded away. Instead, AMC and UK network ITV pooled resources to make a six-part miniseries starring Ian McKellan and Jim Caviezel.

Now, I’m all in favour of a remake of The Prisoner. Just like it dealt with social concerns of its own time, there was scope to do the very same with ours. An impressive cast also contributed to the hope that this could succeed. But oh how it didn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve sampled horror flicks from all around the world, and I’ve found that most of them have a pretty regional flavor to them.  The Japanese and Koreans, for example, love ghost flicks.  The Europeans favor the theme of man’s inhumanity to man.  And most horror I’ve come across from other lands is at least fairly good.  Joining the ranks of the best, however, is a little title from Poland, The 206.

It’s about a guy who wakes up in a stairwell, semi-conscious, unable to figure out what’s going on.  As he sets out to reconstruct his life, he finds out there more going on here than he realizes.

The best part about this one?  There’s NO DIALOGUE.  The story is being told entirely through the actor and through the background music, both of which are quite thoroughly awesome.  The ending, however, is somewhat unclear and can be interpreted several ways, something I never like.

However, the rest of the film is enough to wrangle a rare eight out of ten from the Screenhead Ten Scale, who was sufficiently on edge through most of it to appreciate its sheer Hitchcockian tendencies.

As it turns out, there are a LOT of Saw parodies. I really didn’t see this coming, but a basic search for “Saw Parody” on YouTube turns up a whole lot of pieces.  Some of them I knew about, like Mad TV’s version.

But then there are those like Jigsaw’s Crib, today’s short film target, that just came out of nowhere.

Jigsaw’s Crib is a bizarre combination parody of Saw and MTV’s Cribs.  And as entertaining as that idea would be if it were played straight, the problem is in this case it’s played with absolutely NO CONNECTION to the Saw series.  I figured maybe they’d take us around that warehouse we saw in Saw III, or at least some facsimile thereof, but no.  No, we wandered around some kid’s house while he walked around doing three important things.

1. Talking like a rapper.

2. Being drowned out by the “background” music

3. Doing that ridiculous “air jerk” thing.

No, this was a good idea, and probably would have been hilarious if it were done right, as opposed to being mostly a badly cast episode of Cribs, complete with ludicrously oversized “joint”.  Because as we all know, Little Billy was a serious pothead.

No, he wasn’t. He was a PUPPET. And if these putzes had actually watched one of the Saw films, they might have realized that.

Wildly out of line, with only a minimal contact with the Saw films by virtue of Little Billy and a brief mention of Dr. Gordon, Jigsaw’s Crib is just like its MTV parent–a sad, sorry, sloppy mess.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shakes its head in disgust and hands Jigsaw’s Crib a two out of ten for barely having a clue what it was talking about.  This was a good idea that went horribly, horribly wrong.

It’s a perfect time for Christmas movies to start coming out, seeing as the decorations have been up in the stores since like September.  And so, we’re tackling Four Christmases today, a movie that shows that sometimes, time with the family is the best gift of all.

Even if you don’t notice it at first.

This time, a young couple who’s not terribly interested in getting married, usually manages to duck their family obligations around the holidays by making up elaborate stories and going off to various getaways instead.   But a surprise San Francisco fogbank socks in the airport irrevocably, and so the four are left forced to spend Christmas in the last place on earth they want to…with their families.

Families.  FOUR of them.  Both of their families are divorced, and thus, they’ll have to spend four Christmases in just one day.

What’s so unnerving about this movie is that it veers so wildly between hilarious and awkward that it almost can’t decide whether it’s supposed to be funny or uncomfortable.  It’s like the fat kid at school…he’s trying desperately to be funny, but it’s actually just about as sad.

Each of the families is deranged for its own reason, and believe me, they’re deranged.  The least of the deranged is a family of backwoods amateur ultimate fighters.  It gets worse from there.

It’s awkward.  It’s painful, in spots.  But it’s also got a lot of humor and warmth to it.  There’s lots to enjoy here.  We’ve all seen this kind of thing before. This is Christmas at its absolute.  Family, friends, lovers, growth.  Life.

Four Christmases is like LIFE.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives this strange little allegory a six out of ten.  There’s lots to like here, and there’s lots to feel uncomfortable about.  It IS life.  Take it for what it’s worth.

It’s a surprise to say but Expired, which The Asylum sent me a copy of,  may well be the scariest thing that The Asylum has ever released, and it’s not even a horror flick.

See, apparently, sometime while I wasn’t looking, The Asylum started to go after offbeat comedies and romantic drama, and it’s the latter that we’ll be referencing today.  Expired, however, is a romantic drama of the worst sort–the kind that won’t stop hurting.

In Expired, two horrendously deformed personalities–a total doormat of a woman and a complete jackass of a man–manage to find each other and engage in a tumultuous relationship that takes them through fights and death and bereavement and a horrendous New Years Eve featuring karaoke that has probably been banned by the Geneva Convention.  But will these two prove a match made in Hell?  Or will they realize that they’re both complete wastes of life and go their separate ways?

I’ve never watched a movie that hurt quite so badly as Expired did.

I spent insane amounts of time screaming at my television.  I never wanted a character dead quite so many times, either, as I wanted THESE two dead.  They were like needles.  Needles in my EYES.  By the hour mark I was shrieking in agony, wishing this would finally end.

And eventually, it did.  But by then, I was feeling so badly for pretty much everyone involved, but most badly for myself who had to sit through this misery tour, that I was glad to eject the DVD it came on.

I wondered, what kind of masochist would subject themselves, voluntarily, to watch a movie where a guy tries to score with a woman literally the SAME NIGHT HER MOTHER DIED.  And what kind of cynic would fail to be amazed that she ACTUALLY LET HIM GET SOME.

And it’s like this for the whole movie.  It’s a hundred and seven minutes of some of the most horrendous relationship I’ve ever seen.  These two halfwits make Bobby and Whitney look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Oh, sure, you want to believe that they’re both getting better, in their way.  And you can actually start to see that, after a fashion.  But it’s just too little, too late.  The damage is done.  This movie is downright painful to watch for entirely too little payoff.

The Screenhead Ten Scale’s off in a corner retching right now, but it told me to pass on that it gave this horrendous misery tour a two out of ten.  Wait…it just said something about “rewarding effort”, which is fair enough.  It DID try, after all.  It just didn’t end well at all.

It’s probably about time we got a few more amateur Saw parodies.  The franchise is indeed rife with possibilities, and today, we tackle Saw XIV, or, The One Where Saw Constantly Screws Up.

The title basically gives away the premise and the plot–Jigsaw’s death traps (now Hoffman’s death traps) have always been mechanically complex wonders of amateur engineering.  But what would happen if those darn death traps just wouldn’t work right?

They’ve got a really good point, actually.  All this stuff is incredibly complex–I mean, just one slipped gear or misfired sparkplug and the next thing you know, blammo! No death trap.

And the best part is, this is actually really funny.  Though as it turns out, it’s not alone.  Just because I hadn’t heard of them before, apparently there are a LOT of Saw parodies out there.

The downside here is that the movie was made clearly by people who either didn’t see the Saw series or didn’t watch much of it, as they’re continually referring to Jigsaw as “Saw”, not to mention dressing him up like Little Billy, when we really should be seeing either Jigsaw himself or the “replacement” Jigsaw that is Detective Hoffman.

Anyway, the Screenhead Ten Scale just wiped away a tear of hilarious laughter and hands Saw XIV a seven out of ten. Admittedly, it’s low budget, and they clearly only have a loose idea of what they’re parodying, but the comedy more than makes up for the lack of effects work.

So the crew out at The Asylum dropped me a copy of Megafault, part of the Sci-Fi Channel (I will NOT call it SyFy)’s big lineup of generally horrendous disaster movies.

And as it turns out, it’s nowhere near as bad as I was expecting.

In this one, horrible science combines with B-list actors to bring us the Megafault, a geological phenomenon that suggests a never before seen fault so large it runs the breadth of the United States from roughly West Virginia to the Ring of Fire.  And after a round of dynamite in some mountaintop removal work, somehow, the fault activates (they don’t really explain this well at ALL) and starts tearing hell out of the United States.  So now, the government’s got to find a way to fix this before half the country is torn apart.

I say that Megafault isn’t really a bad movie; it’s just kind of confused.  See, it watches like it was scripted by a really, REALLY overstimulated twelve year old who just started screaming plot elements whilst on a Mountain Dew and Pixy Stix rush.

Things seem to happen almost at random with this one, explosions, people falling into fault lines, people bursting into flame, the world’s biggest avalanche…and all of it seemingly in aid of an absolutely ridiculous core concept.  It’s fun, just like watching that overstimulated twelve year old run around would be fun.  But you wouldn’t want to have to take him home with you either.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale admits that it had a good if confused time, ignores the godawful science involved with this (seriously, even Doctor Venture would know this was a dumb idea) and gives it a fair-enough six out of ten.

The one thing I really love about short films is their openness.  Anybody can come along and shoot one of these on a shoestring in their backyard.  And today, we’re going to prove that exactly right with Dearest Mrs. Apple.

This is the story of a man, his unusual friendship, and the circumstances that led to its end.  I know, sounds kind of like some cheesy chick flick or something, but I assure you, someone will get eaten by the end of this.

Yeah. EATEN.

Dearest Mrs. Apple is actually pretty funny because of its ludicrous nature and its outlandish concept.  This is almost too stupid to be believed, but it will carry on anyway, despite the fact that it really has no business existing.

The Screenhead Ten Scale loves a quick cheap laugh, and thus hands Dearest Mrs. Apple a six out of ten for bringing the funny in short film.